If Firefox didn't come with such awful debug tools I might be interested, but they have some of the worst built in Javascript tools of any browser (I can't even get them to hit a break point inside an event handler). Yes, there is Firebug, but since that isn't actually a part of Firefox it does not speak to Mozilla's ability (and last time I tried it a few months ago, it wasn't working properly with the newest version of Firefox anyways).

So I just enabled it on my copy of Nightly using the instructions from the link I added in my previous comment. It is very lightweight as IDEs go for sure. It pretty much feels like a code aware text editor with Firefox OS simulators added on for debugging (which are added to firefox on demand using the sim manager and can be removed).

I can't see this adding more bloat than what was already in there with the built-in dev tools.

If Firefox didn't come with such awful debug tools I might be interested, but they have some of the worst built in Javascript tools of any browser (I can't even get them to hit a break point inside an event handler). Yes, there is Firebug, but since that isn't actually a part of Firefox it does not speak to Mozilla's ability (and last time I tried it a few months ago, it wasn't working properly with the newest version of Firefox anyways).

That's odd. I don't recall ever having problems with the current version of FF and Firebug working together; and IIRC for the last 2 years or so Firebug has been maintained by someone working for Mozilla because the original creator lost interest and it was deemed too important to let rot. Under these circumstances though, I'm not sure why Mozilla hasn't moved to combine firebug and the build in debug tools.

Packing an IDE into a web browser... that's a whole new level of bloat...

But I guess it was inevitable, after packing streaming video decoding, drm, fake Sockets, 3D rendering APIs, whole compilers and so on into them...

Stuff like settings for the behavior of the close button had to absolutely be removed from the browser because of increasing cost of code maintenance etc. blah with the usual "you want that? get an addon." solution.

But a whole IDE? Pack it in.

The classic emacs-joke ("good OS, but it could use a better text editor") will soon be applicable to Firefox.

I should hope not, who would use a web browser with a > 3GB install that takes 30 minutes? The entire point of Firefox was to get rid of the bloat inherent in Mozilla and they're now approaching Mozilla-like integration of bloat. Why couldn't this be an extension for people who want it? Mozilla seems doomed to repeat their mistakes over and over. This is going to be another Sea Monkey but maybe this time the browser that knocks it out won't be a Gecko browser.

Packing an IDE into a web browser... that's a whole new level of bloat...

But I guess it was inevitable, after packing streaming video decoding, drm, fake Sockets, 3D rendering APIs, whole compilers and so on into them...

Stuff like settings for the behavior of the close button had to absolutely be removed from the browser because of increasing cost of code maintenance etc. blah with the usual "you want that? get an addon." solution.

But a whole IDE? Pack it in.

The classic emacs-joke ("good OS, but it could use a better text editor") will soon be applicable to Firefox.

I should hope not, who would use a web browser with a > 3GB install that takes 30 minutes? The entire point of Firefox was to get rid of the bloat inherent in Mozilla and they're now approaching Mozilla-like integration of bloat. Why couldn't this be an extension for people who want it? Mozilla seems doomed to repeat their mistakes over and over. This is going to be another Sea Monkey but maybe this time the browser that knocks it out won't be a Gecko browser.

Well it's worth noting that Chrome has similar tools for debugging, remote debugging, profiling, console, etc. The real difference with this IDE is it ties these things together and allows you to package Firefox apps using only the browser.

If Firefox didn't come with such awful debug tools I might be interested, but they have some of the worst built in Javascript tools of any browser (I can't even get them to hit a break point inside an event handler). Yes, there is Firebug, but since that isn't actually a part of Firefox it does not speak to Mozilla's ability (and last time I tried it a few months ago, it wasn't working properly with the newest version of Firefox anyways).

That's odd. I don't recall ever having problems with the current version of FF and Firebug working together; and IIRC for the last 2 years or so Firebug has been maintained by someone working for Mozilla because the original creator lost interest and it was deemed too important to let rot. Under these circumstances though, I'm not sure why Mozilla hasn't moved to combine firebug and the build in debug tools.

There was a big warning in Firebug itself, kind of hard to miss if you use it regularly (I think it was in the debugger, you had to click through it to enable debugging). IIRC, it was a result of Firebug depending on the old API for JS debugging, while Mozilla had deprecated it in favor of a new API. I don't know if this is still the case, however, because I ended up switching to Chrome as my primary development browser, and since the tools built into Chrome just work out of the box, I haven't gone back. (And fortunately, since both Google and Mozilla keep their browsers reasonably up to date with standards, 99.9% of what works correctly in Chrome also works in Firefox, so I rarely need to use Firefox's debug tools.)

SeaMonkey project has had development tools in it for awhile. It also has RSS, Email, and IRC chat capabilities built in. I wonder if Firefox is taking a note from them.

Probably not directly; the idea of having a light-weight IDE in the browser isn't really that new or unique.

Seamonkey's bundling of different functions (IDE, mail, etc) has direct lineage back through older Mozilla browsers, to Netscape, starting with Netscape 3.0 Gold and Netscape Communicator 4.0, almost 20 years ago.

In fact, Seamonkey can be seen as the most direct Netscape and original Mozilla descendant, while Firefox is just a descendent of the browser part (one of its draws was that it was focused primarily on browsing and a lot of the perceived "bloat", like the mail client, IDE, etc were either dropped or spun off into other Mozilla software).

Is it a new trend? Chrome has had similar features for a while, although to develop "normal" web applications. Very sweet if used correctly, and you can even use SASS instead of CSS. And even if you don't actually save your files, it can recompile the scripts on the fly.

If Firefox didn't come with such awful debug tools I might be interested, but they have some of the worst built in Javascript tools of any browser (I can't even get them to hit a break point inside an event handler).

I admit the Firefox' devtools aren't that great in usability, but they improved a damn lot in recent years.And I had no problem in using a breakpoint inside an event listener. That's quite odd.

I agree that it's a bit much. But one observation: It's funny how so many people have a problem with an IDE in Firefox...yet no one seems to think Firefox OS is odd.

Look at any thread which is about Firefox OS and you will see a ton of people scratching their heads over why it even exists. This is about the IDE in the browser. Why would it be strange to have most of the comments be about what the actual article is about?